A new stream showing off various aspects of the game, including commentary on its development, was done on Mar 11, 2018. That video is now online.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xisrvF739-E
MAINTENANCE UPDATE
A minor update which revises the difficulty of the new scenarios 0106 - 0112.
NOTE: the list of scenarios and the descriptions are listed in the GAME_SCENARIOS.TXT file in the GBS modding distribution archive. Check the discussion forum for more info.
Adjusted gun laser power requirements, resulting in faster gun recharge rates. NOTE: The higher the laser level, the more damage to the target - at a sacrifice of longer recharge (between firing) rate. The gun laser has limited power. When firing, if the requested energy exceeds the current charge, the guns won't fire until fully recharged. The default laser level is 10 (0=off, 100=full), allowing faster recharge rate, more shots, less damage per shot. In addition, all craft have varying recharge rates, and per shot damage. Remember this before tinkering with these settings. The undocumented commands can be used to increase (') | decrease (;) the laser level by 10 with each tap.
Added target range to F10 target camera
Minor 3D spatial audio improvements
MOTHER will no longer warn about a missile target as if it were a ship
FIXED: Using cheats to spawn ships would sometimes cause a crash
This release also includes the game's scripting system. See the discussion forum for more info.
Minor tweaks and improvements.
Additional improvements to 3D spatial audio.
Revisions to K, L, O radar targeting commands (and the controller variants). They now prioritize threats which are actually firing at you or the selected target. This means that when using these commands, you will find units (e.g. enemy air defenses, fighters etc) which are actively trying to kill you, instead of units (e.g. starbase, launch pad) which have radar, but which don’t have weapons. NOTE: If you get NO TARGET after using one of these commands, that means no target was found in the current radar mode (SPC/GND/AIR) so you need to switch modes and check again. e.g. on the planet, if a GND target isn’t found, then the threat was an AIR target.
Added two (0111, 0112) new space to planet combat mission variations
The high level combat tactics for NPC fighters (removed from Config in previous version) is now disabled by default due to combat being difficult for some people. If you do want to use it, search the GAME_CONFIG.INI file for HLEnemyCombatTactics and set to TRUE; then save the file and restart. Good luck!
The 100% UNSUPPORTED Game Builder System (GBS) tools have been released (download). This archive contains all the script sources for the scenarios included in the game, along with some samples. See the included README.TXT for more info.
As promised, this update has now been released. It contains a few tweaks and improvements.
Minor tweaks and improvements
Added new space and planetary scenarios, including several space and planetary sandbox variants.
Removed all legacy 4:3 resolution support. Minimum supported res is now 1280×720 (720p). Also added support for new resolutions: 2560×1440 (QHD, WQHD, Quad HD, 1440p) and 3840×2160 (UHD, Ultra HD, 4K, 2160p) More info
You can now dock with a planetary Mobile Forward Base in order to repair and rearm when deep inside enemy lines. This works the same way as when docking with a planetary starbase or a space starstation
Changed NPC gun sounds playback to ON|OFF setting in CONFIG
Updated audio engine, and made various tweaks and improvements to audio playback.
Revised commandline options. See KB77
Updated in-game docs and UI. Locate and run the GALCOMES_steam_shortcuts.exe file in your install folder to update stand-alone PDF files. See KB62
Disabled playback of weather audio on Tacops
Disabled controller vibration due to WIN10 issues
Disabled multiplayer from the main menu due to master servers going offline years ago. Multiplayer is no longer supported. See KB80.
Various revisions to support the future (coming soon!) release of the game’s modding tools which can be used to create space and planetary combat missions. These are the same tools released for Universal Combat CE, but with support for GCES-SE.
FIXED: Some lingering minor bugs and isssues. See known issues for more info.
Yes, I know this is going to come as quite the surprise, but I decided to go back in and do an update for this legacy title.
It was a lot more work than I expected, but I think that it was well worth it.
I was pleasantly surprised how well the graphics have held up over the years, even at high resolutions.
Anyway, I am doing some final testing before finally releasing it. Hopefully in the coming week. Until then, you can check out the latest update from the changelog which I just updated.